Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/538

526 the orphan or the staff of the aged, it could not protect the accumulations of the rich from the neediness of the poor. That sympathetic Lazarus should shiver in silence, lest he disturb the repose of Dives in his palace, that fraternal feeling should stay the hand of the hungry peasant from the game of the park, lest the lord miss his accustomed pheasant at dinner, is downright unthinkable. Assuredly then, it is not fellow-feeling that makes the wheels of industry and commerce roll forward in their implacable course.

Sympathy will stay the hand of the wife-beater, but it will not spurn the bribe nor spare the lie. It will snatch a child from trampling hoofs, but it will not keep the nightwatchman awake, or hold the contractor to the terms of his agreement. It will nerve the rescuing fireman, but it will not make the postman take trouble with a badly written address. It will give to the beggar, but it will not check the adulteration of goods. It will man the life-boat, but it will not lead men to give just weight, to make returns to the assessor, or to slay their country's enemies on the battlefield. It will care for children, but it will not shun drunkenness, or unchastity.

The strength and the weakness of sympathy must now be apparent. Love of others will safeguard the family and a circle of friends, but it will not hold a man to his duty toward that large body of fellow citizens for whom he has no feeling but indifference. It will check men when the evil of a deed is sure to fall upon a known individual, but not when it lost in the vague mass called "the public." One who will shrink from self-aggrandizement when the harm to others can be clearly visualized, will not hesitate at a foul deed when the consequences, though vast, are vague and indefinite. Tenderness of heart may withhold poison from one, but it will not withhold explosive kerosene or contaminated water from thousands. Blows that will fall on people natural feeling may be able to avert, but it cannot protect social institutions such as marriage, property, the ballot or free speech from being trampled on in the rush for the spoil. And as social development is marked by the substitution of fixed impersonal relations for transient personal relations,